Caroline Misner








The Bath

For nearly twenty years I’ve held this post:
empress of an asylum, walled
in pink porcelain, a faucet
cracked at the roots when
a maid leaned her weight
into it, soap scented with exotic
flowers I can’t pronounce.

I burrow beneath heaps of foam,
crumpled mountains steeped in mist,
summoning the courage to slide
under and drown, so that
I can reset my jigger
and be grounded for a time.

The froth, like the stale snow
mounded round the gutters
this March night. The window
blinds are open to accept the moon
the way a small egg is accepted
in the bowl of a spoon.

Through that one bright eye,
stiffened limbs hoard their buds,
and pause while I contemplate
what I should do next.
The purr of the wind
carries the denseness of the night.

Continue...

Greetings one and all and welcome to my brand new website!  Please bear with me  portraitI work on filling its pages with news and musings. Being technologically challenged, it may take a while to work out some of the glitches and I hope to have it finished within the next few weeks.  In the meantime, please feel free to browse through the archives and have a look at some of my work.  I've been writing poetry ever since I could remember and I've decided to include a section of Juvenilia in the archives.  Most of the poems listed there were written in my early teens and many of them are just plain awful!  But a few gems do stand out and I hope you enjoy them.  Also, if you would like to know more about me and the work I do, please feel free to click on "About".  There I have posted a brief biography of myself.  I'm not trying to be falsely modest, but I really loathe bragging about myself.  I feel an author's work should stand on its own merits and where an author was born or where she lives or what she eats for breakfast are completely irrelevant.

I would also be remiss if I didn't included a big Thank You! to my oldest son, Kevin, who with a friend designed this website for me and programmed it so that even I could manage it.  And another big Thank You! goes to my dear father Jan Kurz, who was in on it the whole time and provided the stunning photography behind the text of the daily poem.  And another big Thank You! goes out to all the editors, publishers and fellow writers who have supported me and my work over the years and gave me a chance when I needed it, including a Journey Prize nomination and two Pushcart Prize nominations!


"...And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it and the imagination to improvise.  The worst enemy to creativity is self doubt."
--Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)